Yangchuanosaurus

Yangchuan lizard

• Yangchuan · Chinese (place name) · Yongchuan (Yangchuan) County, Sichuan/Chongqing, China
• sauros · Greek · lizard

Yangchuanosaurus is named after Yongchuan (formerly romanized as Yangchuan), the county in Chongqing (then Sichuan Province), China, near where the first fossils were found. The Greek "sauros" means lizard. The name therefore means "Yongchuan lizard". It was a large predatory theropod of the Late Jurassic.

Named by

Dong, Chang, Li and Zhou

Year named

1978

Period

Late Jurassic

Found in

Shangshaximiao Formation, Sichuan, China

A metriacanthosaurid (sinraptorid in older classifications) theropod. The type species is Y. shangyouensis; Y. magnus is also generally recognised. Authorship attribution (Dong et al. 1978) is the commonly cited one.